Share this:

A panel appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, seen speaking at a recent Association of California Water Agencies conference in Sacramento, recommended 3 percent raises for statewide elected officials and legislators.

SACRAMENTO >> In a move to restore deep cuts to pay and perks during the Great Recession, California lawmakers and statewide elected officers will get 3 percent raises at the end of this year, a panel appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown decided Monday.

The decision comes a few days before Brown is scheduled to roll out his revised budget proposal, and as the state enjoys higher-than-estimated tax revenues.

The Citizens Compensation Commission voted 4-0 for the pay hikes, as well as restore 10 percent cuts in health, dental and vision benefits imposed during the recession. The new salaries still don’t approach the all-time, pre-recession highs, but critics were quick to question whether legislators deserved the pay hike.

Assembly members and state senators — who already were the nation’s highest-paid state lawmakers — will earn $100,113 per year, up from $97,197, though a few in leadership positions earn more; lawmakers also earn a $142 tax-free “per diem” payment for each day that they’re in Sacramento on legislative business. Brown’s salary will rise from $177,467 to $182,791 per year.

“It’s all an exercise in perception and fairness, rather than actual impact on the budget,” commission chairman Thomas Dalzell said later Monday.

The panel’s decision doesn’t change the amount of money allocated to the Legislature, he said; it merely lets lawmakers themselves draw a larger share of what’s already budgeted to their branch. And the statewide officials’ raises are a drop in the state’s $108 billion budget.

The commission also restored what had been a 10 percent cut in health, dental and vision benefits for these officials. “Nobody could articulate a reason to treat them different from managerial state employees, so we restored that,” Dalzell said.

This is the third consecutive year of pay raises for state lawmakers and officials; last year’s increase, effective in December, was 2 percent. But earlier, the commission had cut lawmakers’ pay by 18 percent and eliminated their state-owned vehicles during the recession.

Back in 2008, at their highest points, the governor’s salary was $212,179 while lawmakers earned $116,208.

Dalzell said the 3 percent raise “was in the middle of what people were comfortable with” on the commission, some believing it should be more and some less. “It was a fairly quick consensus to come up with,” he said.

Not everyone finds legislators so deserving.

“The pay increase for the governor, as CEO of a very, very large enterprise, doesn’t particularly bother us, but the legislative salaries are a different story,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The commission seemed to believe that a rebounding economy makes this the right time to restore salaries, Coupal said, but “it’s lost on most people that it’s not our political elite who are responsible for the dollars coming into the treasury, it’s the taxpayers.”

Texas’ economy is recovering better than California’s, and the Lone Star State has only a part-time legislature, he added. “This notion that we get quality of representation from high pay is not well-founded.”

Texas lawmakers receive a $7,200 base annual salary, and meet for a 140-day session once every two years.

California has extra cash at the moment. A surge in personal income tax revenue pushed the general fund’s April receipts $1.8 billion past expectations, Controller Betty Yee reported Monday; with two months left in the fiscal year, the total general fund receipts of $92 billion are beating estimates by about $3.4 billion.

That’s 3.8 percent higher than Brown expected in the proposed budget he offered in January, and 7.2 percent higher than anticipated when Brown signed the current budget last June.

The California Citizens Compensation Commission was created through voters’ passage of Proposition 112 in June 1990; before that, the Legislature set salaries for itself and statewide officials. The governor appoints the seven-member board — two from labor; one from small business; one from a nonprofit public interest groups; a compensation expert; a major corporation executive; and one representing the general population. The commission can raise salaries only when there’s no budget deficit.

Brown named a new commission member just last week: Matina Kolokotronis, 50, a Democrat from Sacramento, has been the Sacramento Kings’ president of business operations since 2010 and director of the Sacramento Kings Foundation since 2004.